If your film is more than 15 minutes long or bigger than 2Gb,
you can upgrade free of charge - see details in the Video Hosts
table below.

Share your vision

Put your films online for the world to discover and get them
embedded in webpages - your own, the club's or even here on the
IAC website. A film which catches the public eye can be seen by an
immense audience around the globe. How else would your work be
enjoyed in Japan, Honolulu, Australia, Canada, Timbuktu, Ukraine
and Iceland?

For dedicated film enthusiasts the biggest benefit is
that your films can be showcased easily on websites like
this one, without demanding new skills from the
webmaster or costing a fortune in "bandwidth"
surcharges.

Our picture (right) shows a page on this website with
an embedded video. It is one of the Making Of
... series.

In this case it is all about Michael Gough's film After
the Bus Had Gone. Take
a look ...

How is it done?

Upload the video to a specialised video host like YouTube. Once
there you are given some code for "embedding". Copy that and
paste it into a web page. Voila ! It works like an oblong hole
in the page, through which people see the video ... though it is
actually running on YouTube or other video host. Social
networking sites like Facebook have built-in linking systems for
such videos.

You must have the necessary rights for the music and any
footage you did not take yourself.

All major video hosts use automatic music recognition
software. That checks your video and flags up any apparent use
of copyright music. Some sites issue a warning, most remove your
video immediately. YouTube may remove the sound and offer you a
chance to choose from its own library of alternative free music
tracks.

YouTube has an
agreement with the main UK music companies and
rights holders, which means fewer problems if UK
film makers upload films with copyright music. If
there is a query, quoting your IAC copyright
licence details is often enough to resolve it and
get the video back online. (Details
of the IAC copyright licence scheme: here.)

Video Hosts

There are scores of websites which will host your video free
of charge. Those most commonly used by British film makers are:

Anyone whose YouTube account is in good standing -
i.e. no copyright complaints against it - can
increase this to "unlimited", which seems to be up to 11
hours. Click the link at the foot of your Upload page
marked "increase your limit" and follow the
instructions. The maximum file size then rises from 2GB
to 128GB. This is a free option.

"MotionMaker" scheme - is free, allows unlimited
length, but each movie is subject to approval by their
staff.

They all accept many video formats but prefer MP4 (MPEG - 4)
in H.264. Internet connections bring files to
you (downloading) much faster than sending them out from
you (uploading). This means it can take hours to send a
movie up to a video host. Exact times depend on how fast your
internet connection is and how busy the web happens to be. All
video hosts process the movies - making them into smaller files.
Upload the best quality you can as close as possible to
their maximum file size.

Many editing programs will generate output in the preferred MP4
(H.264) format. If yours does not, Canopus ProCoder will do
a great job, but it costs a lot. Or ...

HANDBRAKE

Handbrake is a free compressor that is
simple to use and yet allows for detailed techie settings if you
require them. Visit http://handbrake.fr
to download a version for Windows, Mac or Linux. (Make
sure you do not get distracted by advertisements for other
similar tools which appear on the download page.)

Once it is on your computer, start the program. At top
left click the Source button and a file
manager appears. Navigate to the folder with your film/s
in it. The program immediately scans the file and lists
all the video titles it find there.

On the right the source file was "canal-bulgarian" and
clicking on the arrow in the field called Title
lets you choose any of the titles in that folder. These
usually appear as numbered items with their running time
in brackets ... it is easy to choose the one with the
length that matches your film.

Go to the field marked Destination, click the
Browse button and navigate to the folder where
you want the amended film to be stored.

Make sure that the Output Settings
specifies MP4 - and click the Start
button at the top of the program window. You can usually
leave everything else alone ...

Check the size of the finished file and if it is within
the limit allowed by your video host start to upload
it. If it is still too big you may need to explore
the options within Handbrake. To explore the
possibilities, hover your cursor over most buttons and
fields to see a pop-up message explaining briefly what
they do. The Help button is helpful!
There is also a useful set of user discussions available
through the Handbrake website.

Share your passions.

Share your stories.

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Authors' views are not necessarily those of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers.
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Art work by Tony Kendle.